HotJobs Spam

Has anybody else noticed the prevalence of job spam on some of the major job sites?

Check out this screen shot from doing a PHP Detroit search on HotJobs

Of the 35 jobs that it returned, 27 of them were that same mystery shopper job. You know, the one where you pay them first then they send you information about being a mystery shopper. I don’t think anybody has ever made money off of that job except the person offering it.

Come on Yahoo, clean this crap up.

I haven’t noticed nearly as much spam on Monster, and none at all on DICE (of course, compared to monster there are only about 1/10 of the jobs on DICE)

So far I’ve tried Monster, HotJobs, HiddenNetwork, DICE, computerjobs, and craigslist. Are there any other great sites out there that you guys use?

Ryan Jones is an SEO from Detroit. By day he works as a manager of SEO & Analytics at SapientNitro where his team performs SEO for Fortune500 clients. By night he's either playing hockey or attempting to take over the world with his own websites - which he would have already succeeded in doing had it not been for those meddling kids and their dog. The views expressed here have not been paid for and belong only to Ryan, not any of his employers or clients. Follow Ryan on Twitter at: @RyanJones, add him on Google+ or visit his personal website: www.RyanMJones.com

Comments

Couldn’t agree more… it sucks, especially when I get 10 emails a day from careerbuilder and monster about jobs with sketchy details… all spam and all crap. Rob McGovern who created and sold careerbuilder spoke at the sports marketing conference I was at a few weeks ago. His new creation is jobfox.com where employers hunt you instead of you hunting the job. Take a look.

I can relate to your frustration, Ryan. CareerBuilder is by far the most notorious of all with spam emails. If you have a profile and resumes on CareerBuilder, remove them immediately. Run, don’t walk.

Craigslist is good, but there are quite a few low-balling companies that are looking for highly educated, highly skilled and highly experienced individuals for below average wages. The community at CL can certainly help out more. I know Craig used to be from the Detroit area, and on top of that I have also personally met Jim Buckmaster while he was in Ann Arbor not that long ago. Great guys, who are humble and making a difference on the web.

Monster is not too bad, but the excessive banner ads and Univ. of Phoenix pitch is becoming unbearable. HotJobs is full of useless job listings but at least they haven’t spammed via harvested email addresses on resumes. Dice is pretty secure, but it is quite limited to short-term contract positions. Even the state-sponsored MichWorks.org is weak on preventing bad postings. The majority of jobs on there are not legitimate positions paying good living wages that would sustain Michigan’s economy. So much for our tax dollars.

About Ryan Jones

Ryan Jones is an SEO from Michigan. Ryan works as an SEO manager at SapientNItro. Ryan also runs several websites of his own. [More About Ryan..]